


The Right Partner

by RunWithWolves



Series: 30 Days of Creampuff [23]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: 30DaysofCreampuff, F/F, Waltzing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4114483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carmilla believes that the best way to find love is to dance, to see how your partner looks at you and moves with you. She'll dance with every person in the room until she finds someone who can match her steps. Centuries of swinging girls around dance floors with nothing but heartache for her trouble. </p>
<p>And once she's given up the idea of love, she comes to Laura Hollis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Partner

A ball was a glittering moment of possibility and as Carmilla was passed from suitor to suitor, dance to dance, she smiled at each. Her feet drifted over the dance floor, steps that she’d practiced since childhood finally getting their use as she drifted through the ballroom. 

She was passed from the brown haired Duke of Essoe to the large nosed Earl of Budenberg. Both were entertaining enough, the Duke made small quips as they moved about the room while the Earl was one of the best dancers she had encountered. 

Both qualities she could admire.

Still, when her time with the Earl ended Carmilla softly inclined her head. Her eyes fluttered to his face and she saw nothing new in his smile. So Carmilla moved smoothly across the room, skirts sweeping behind her as the crowd parted in her wake. They had seen her do this before. Many times. Crossing the room, she extended a hand to a new arrival to the castle, the Lady of Pithos. 

“Would you dance me, my Lady?” Carmilla asked. 

The Lady blushed but took her hand. The others had clearly prepared her. There wasn’t a person who passed through a ball at Castle Karnstein without dancing with the Countess. Male or female. King or servant. 

The Countess danced with them all. 

Carmilla effortless slipped from following to leading the dance, twirling Lady Pithos through the familiar set of steps. She gave the woman a pleasant smile, listening to the tap of the music as their hands parted and then reconnected a hundred different times. 

For a moment, Carmilla’s heart leapt as a particularly close brush of a twirl caused a hitch in the Lady’s breathing. When the dance ended, Carmilla looked at her partner’s smile knowing that the smile on her own face was broad. Reassuring. Hopeful.

The Lady gave her a smile. One she’d seen a hundred times on a hundred other faces. 

So Carmilla’s smile faded to politeness and thanked the lady for the dance, already looking for the next new partner. 

The gentlemen smiled gallantly down at her as they whirled her around the room. Her smiles were enticing she knew, she’d practiced in the mirror. The women hid their smiles behind ducked chins as she took their hands and coaxed them to dance with her. Her true intentions safe behind a veil of friendship. 

Still they smiled, they all smiled. 

It was never the smile she was looking for.

The gentlemen smiled to win her heart. They were eager to be the next Count Karnstein and amass the lands and fortune that came with the title. 

The women smiled politely. They indulged the odd Countess Karnstein and her strange habit of dancing with every person in the room. 

Carmilla kept trying, swinging through the room, graceful as she was kind. Everything her books told her created love. She smiled at serving boys and offered a help hand to lost guests. The Countess was everything the rumours always said she would be. Lovely. Elegant. Perfect. 

Guests tripped over themselves to speak with the 18 year old Countess. They bestowed praises on her parents. Congratulating them on raising such a fine daughter. The picture of the aristocracy and such a fine dancer. Would she like to meet a handsome young man? They all had sons and cousins. 

But when she’d danced with everyone in the room, Carmilla stood alone on her balcony in her fine dress with no-one looking at her but the stars. 

Her hands balled in the folds of her skirt, her eyes prickling with tears. This was not the ending to her 18th birthday that she’d always imagined. As her friends cavorted through the ballroom behind her with husbands and lovers, she was still alone. Always alone. Her books spoke of love and passion and enduring commitment. Her friends regaled her with stories of broken hearts and stolen loves. Kisses in the night that made their hands shake and want to die for. 

Nearly two decades and Carmilla still had never been there. Never loved.

Attraction, she had felt. The way her stomach curled and fire lit her body when certain faces looked her way. The grace of a waistline. The melody of a voice. She had seen the flame of lust burn in the eyes of many a suitor. Felt it in the steps of a dance, too close and too rough to be anything else. 

But love. Love was an elusive song that played just out of reach. 

Revealed only in a dance. 

Those who wanted her title and her lands danced perfectly, an acceptable distance between them, painted smiles, and light conversations. Those who wanted her body danced too close, eyes skimming her chest instead of her face, and smiles that spoke of leering winks. 

Never anything else. 

18 years was too old to be an uncourted Countess. Somehow the years had passed and Carmilla had never felt the touch of a hand that was afraid to let go but willing to do so. Never seen eyes that stared into hers like the world was contained inside them. Never seen a smile that shone in perfectly harmony with her own until she no longer had to consider what love meant. 

Never kissed.

Carmilla angrily swiped at the tears with the back of her hand, leaning against the heavy stone railing of the balcony. The rough stone bit into her, providing a grounding point against the emptiness of the night sky.

Her Papa’s voice drifted through the window. From it’s tone alone she could tell he was bragging about his darling Countess. Showing her off to the world and proclaiming her greatness. Turning her inability to find love into a proud demonstration of, ‘what man could be good enough for my baby girl?’

She wanted to believe it. But the facts said otherwise. Clearly there was something wrong with her. A missing hole. An inability. Something so glaringly obvious that no-one could ever love it. Something she couldn’t see.

A flaw on top of flaws. 

Carmilla traced her finger along the stone, desperately trying to puzzle it out. To find the thing that made her unlovable. Was she really so uncultured, so ugly, so boring, so stupid, that absolutely no-one could find a place in their heart to love her?

She jerked around as screams filled the ballroom behind her, coming face to face with a tall, pale woman.

When she awoke, she learned she had an eternity to puzzle it out. 

#

With the passing decades, Carmilla had been at hundreds of balls and danced with a thousand different partners. Her new Mother laughed but didn’t discourage the behaviour, allowing her attendance so long as Carmilla would bring her the choice morsels. Which she did. Carmilla was thankful, so thankful for this chance to search time for anyone who could love someone like her. 

She was still the graceful Countess. All smiles and waltzes. 

Quick with her smiles and fast on her feet. With her new abilities, she was ever more the charming hero of her books. She could whip distressed damsels away from their captors and throw dragons miles away. The anonymous knight. The secret champion. 

And yet even after these heroics, when she attended the ball and saw her rescued maidens, there was nothing. The dance was empty. The same as the thousands before it. Nothing more than a dance. 

But Carmilla persisted. She refined herself, learning undead languages and reading anything she could get her hands on. She could be smarter, more pleasant. She could learn to make herself more beautiful. She could fix herself. 

Solve the puzzle. Fix the flaw. 

Exactly nine decades later and Carmilla was closing in on answer. She didn’t want it. 

It was her birthday again and she stood in the ruins of Karnstein Castle that had survived the near century. She ran her thumb over her fingers, feeling nothing but the softness of her own skin. A century worth of love buried inside and never given somewhere to go. 

A partnerless dance. Melody instead of harmony. 

Time was lonely. Like she was lost in the depths of space with stars that flickered too far away to touch as she slowly choked for air. Carmilla was tired of being lonely. 

She’d asked her Mother once. The vampire had shook her head and said, “My darling, why do you persist? It is simple, stone cannot love flesh and you are a glittering diamond.”

There was the answer. She had to love Mother for giving it to her. 

She had to love first. That was her problem, always looking for love in the eyes of her partner instead of giving it herself. The solo dance was her own fault, for never letting anyone in. 

So, she resolved to fall in love. To fill the loneliness, Carmilla fell in love a dozen times a day. She decided to love the girl at the butcher shop whose hand brushed against hers when she handed over a prime cut. Carmilla smiled and returned every day for months, just to strike up a conversation. The girl married a farm boy. 

A meeting of eyes across carriages with a blonde maiden had her imagining her heart hitting a new rhythm. She ordered the carriage driver to go faster, locked in a race with the blonde. Sharing a keen smile and shouting out the window a proposed meeting place. The girl grinned back. Once the race was won, she never saw the girl again. 

Carmilla forced her breath to catch when she found a girl reading underneath a tree in the gardens. She dove wholeheartedly into the girl’s favourite books as they spoke long into the night each Sunday afternoon. The girl fell in love with a simple maid. 

And so, Carmilla kept pushing herself into love. Living only for the moments when she could believe it was true and finding a new girl each time the last left her. They kept her grounded, from viewing eternity or dwelling on the string of rejections behind her. Each touch of a hand or painted smile was now an opportunity.

She never had a chance when she met Elle. 

Mother sent her, playing the same old game with a carriage crash and a sick daughter who just couldn’t travel onward. Carmilla played her part, lying on the ground and faking a fever. Feeling herself be lifted and taken to another castle where there would inevitably be servants looking after her. 

But when she awoke, there was a beautiful girl hovering over her with a hand delicately sliding the hair back from her forehead. Then the girl looked down at her and gave her a soft smile. The girl’s hair encased in a halo of light, creating an outline that kept Carmilla from seeing her eyes. 

Carmilla didn’t have to imagine the catch in her breath or push herself into the fall. 

She simply fell. 

Finally, she fell in love with a girl named Elle. 

The more she got to know this girl, the harder she tumbled. The intensity of her emotions wiping away the hundreds of girls before as her piddling thoughts of romance were dashed against the intensity of her tumble. They had been nothing. Mere figments of imagination. 

This was everything. 

As they walked in the gardens and Carmilla picked a bouquet of flowers, Elle laughed and thanked her for her kindness. When Carmilla spoke of books she’d read and far off places, Elle told her how smart she was and casually commented on her beauty. Elle was proof that her mother was wrong. 

Stone could love flesh. 

Elle’s father hosted a ball for the girls, at his daughter’s insistence when she found out how much Carmilla loved dancing. Even as Carmilla was swung around the room on the arm of handsome men, she didn’t bother checking their eyes or their smiles or consider what they wanted from her. 

She just wanted Elle. 

So, she crossed the dance floor and asked her love to dance. Elle blushed but took her hand. Carmilla let herself grin, pulling the girl across the dance floor, aligning their hands, and letting herself enjoy the feel of Elle’s light hand on her waist. She pulled Elle into the dance as her partner struggled to keep up with the twirls and dips. Always a moment behind. 

Carmilla told herself that her love just needed practice. Then the dance would be perfect. Two moving as one. 

Until her Mother descended down on Carmilla’s happy moment, shattering her beliefs with a single set of words. With a truth that Carmilla had kept to herself. Even as Carmilla tried to save her love, desperately trying to make her flee, she watched Elle flinch. Backing from her touch. Screaming for a hero to save her. 

And then Carmilla looked into Elle’s eyes. 

She didn’t see anger. She didn’t see sadness. No hate or pain or loss or grief or anything that would indicate a loved turned sour. 

Only fear. 

Fear was not born of love. It was defined by the unknown, terror of what was to come. To love something you must know it. Elle was afraid. 

So even as she was forced into the coffin, Carmilla had her answer. Still, she kicked and screamed and fought her mother. For even if Elle did not love her, she loved Elle. She would not see her dashed to pieces, blood cast upon rock. Her mother was wrong. Stone could love flesh.

When she burst from the coffin seventy years later and regained her strength, it was still the thought on her mind. 

Her mother was wrong. Stone could love flesh. 

So that wasn’t her flaw. That wasn’t the problem. She knew. After 70 years, she knew what the problem was. 

So Carmilla returned home, to the Karnstein Castle. All remnants of its splendor gone, forgotten by everything except the dirt where the building once sat. She wandered the field, making her way to what was once the ballroom. 

She stopped in the middle, putting her arms up and embracing an invisible partner. Arms embracing only a ghost. Carmilla danced through the field, recalling the steps that she’d danced until they were more habit than enjoyable. She danced without a smile, no kindness left in the Countess of old. 

With every step, she shed the foolish girl who’d stared as eagerly at every face. So hopeful that this one would be the one to love her. Foolish. She let the Countess go, pushing her through her fingers and into the ghost with whom she danced. 

The vampire and the girl, one last hurrah. 

She understood now. All those years ago, all those partners saw what she hadn’t. It wasn’t that she couldn’t love. It was that she wasn’t worth loving. 

She twirled with a final act of grace, her silent partner keeping her steps perfectly as no-one else ever would. Then, Carmilla took a deep shuddering breath and opened her fists. Releasing her partner to the wind. 

She swore to never dance again.

#

Laura Hollis was insufferable. She jumped when she should hide and extended kindness when she should have been horrifically offended. She yelled at Carmilla for being a slob and told her that she was worthy of a better life. 

It was a personal point of pride on Carmilla’s ego that she could rile the girl up so much. She went out of her way to leave hair in the shower and eat the girl’s food and parade her long line of study buddies through the dorm room. 

She relished each bunched up face that the girl gave her. 

But the tiny human gave it right back. Snatching back her pillow and putting Carmilla in her place with a fury that would have decimate a small town in the wrong hands. She drove the girl to hate her.

So Carmilla was safe. 

But then the human would spend hours trying to save girls everyone else ignored. Or she’d wear something nerdy like it didn’t embarrass her at all. Or she’d drink out of that absurdly square mug and eat a thousand cookies. 

Laura would smile.

And Carmilla would feel less safe. 

She knew she shouldn’t. She knew that. But still she found herself making mugs of hot cocoa that she had no intention of drinking. Or covering the girl with a blanket when she fell asleep at her computer. Or going so far as to fetch a charm to free her of her dreams. 

For the briefest moment she thought her heart skipped a beat when the girl gave her a smile or spoke an encouraging word. For a moment she wondered if Laura’s did too. 

Then they kidnapped her and tied to her to a chair, reasserting the long held notion. She was unlovable. Laura’s voice rang in her ears as she saluted her victory. 

And yet, when her body went into convulsions Laura did not let her die, when she told her morbid tale Laura grew silent, when Laura was in the room she made sure to keep Carmilla entertained despite the ropes. 

When William set her free, Laura chose to hid behind her for protection instead of fleeing out the door. 

A week later, Laura was in the middle of berating her for stealing the rest of her cookies when a thought punched Carmilla in the chest. Laura hadn’t changed. Where Elle’s eyes had turned to fear, Laura’s still burned with fire as she yelled at the monster. Where Elle’s smile had faded, Laura still shot her grins. 

And Carmilla ignored the catch in her breath, choosing instead to pull Laura’s last cookie from her pocket and eat it in front of the girl. Laura’s eyes bulged. 

Somewhere their conversations faded into a easy banter. Carmilla found herself cracking a smile that shone only for the girl and when she looked back, Laura’s smile was free. Offering the smile time and time again without asking for anything in return. Holding Carmilla’s eyes with her own and only dropping her gaze to turn a pretty shade of pink. 

And suddenly the opportunity was there. Laura’s innate curiosity asking about parties and dances. Carmilla’s smile growing as they spoke. Almost without thought she mentioned waltzing and extended her hand to show Laura the steps. 

She froze, almost recoiling her hand when she realized what she’d done. 

Laura didn’t hesitate to move into the embrace of a vampire.

More than 300 years of suffocated love burst from Carmilla’s veins when, with the first twirl, Laura moved perfectly alongside her and came back closer than ever. Harmony to her melody, as though they could hear the same music. 

Carmilla had an inkling of an answer. Not flawed. Not unloving. Not unlovable. 

She’d just been waiting for the right partner.

**Author's Note:**

> hey cupcakes! Just wanted to say again how thankful I am for all of your support and kindness. Everything from your kudos and comments to your tumblr follows and flailing (http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/) gives me a case of the smiles and helps me keep writing in the hours when the sun rises and when it sets. As we draw to the end, it helps me know where to put my energy.
> 
> This is the twenty-third story of '30 Days of Creampuff' where I'll be posting a Carmilla fanfic chapter every weekday for 30 days.
> 
> Stay stupendous. Aria.


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